


Though They Sink Through the Sea

by dashakay



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:45:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She freezes in her tracks. She knows that voice as well as her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Minneapolis, 2011_

Nicollet Mall is strangely deserted for just after midnight on a Friday night. The first real snow of the winter is falling in thick clumps from the sky.

Penny shivers as she walks the two blocks from The Local to the parking ramp. She shoves her hands into her coat pockets for warmth, wondering why she moved from Pasadena to Minneapolis, of all places. She forgot her gloves in the car. She's always forgetting her gloves. Her boots make a squeaky noise as she crunches through the newly fallen snow.

She's just crossed the street when she feels a hand grab the arm of her coat. A drunk from one of the bars or maybe a panhandler. She pulls away her arm and walks faster, glancing around to see if there's anyone else walking down Nicollet Mall. She digs in her left coat pocket for her cell phone, just in case.

"Penny," she hears a voice call out from behind her. "Penny, stop…"

She freezes in her tracks. She knows that voice as well as her own.

No. It can't be. It's not possible.

Penny doesn't believe in ghosts. Never has.

Not until tonight.

  
_Pasadena, 2010_

Her manager pulls her aside just as the dinner rush is heating up. "Phone for you, Penny," he says, looking aggrieved.

"Who is it?"

"It's that guy. The weird one who always comes here on Tuesdays."

She rolls her eyes. "I told him he couldn't call me here."

"He says it's an emergency."

"I'm sorry, Craig," she says over her shoulder, stalking to the office. She's seriously pissed. An emergency for Sheldon probably constitutes needing a ride to the comic book store or that Leonard ate his leftover pad thai.

She picks up the phone. "This had better be good, Sheldon..."

"Penny?" He sounds like he's calling from thousands of miles away.

She sighs loudly into the receiver for maximum effect. "What _is_ it, Sheldon?"

"Penny, can you pick me up?"

"I'm at work, Sheldon. Call Leonard."

There's a long pause. "I'm at the hospital. In the emergency room."

Her heart starts thumping against her ribs. "Which hospital? Are you all right?"

"Huntington."

"What happened? Are you all right?" But Sheldon has already hung up.

*

She drives like a bat out of hell to Huntington Hospital even though it's only a three-minute drive, straight up Pasadena Avenue.

It takes her forever to find a parking spot and she nearly plows right into an Escalade on the third floor of the garage. She wishes she'd sprung the six bucks for valet parking.

She rushes into the ER waiting room and spots Sheldon right away, sitting in a chair and talking to two police officers, who are asking him questions and scribbling in tiny notepads. She stands back, wondering what Sheldon did to need to talk to the police. At least he looks like he's all right. From where he's standing he seems to have bruises on his forehead, something of a shiner developing on his left eyelid and there's a bandage on his cheekbone.

What could Sheldon have possibly done to get himself injured and attract the attention of the police? The mind boggles.

After a few minutes, the police walk away. Sheldon spots her and stands up. She can't read the expression on his face, but then again, she usually can't.

She takes five steps closer. "Are you okay, sweetie?"

"Penny," he says, his voice hoarse.

"What happened?"

"We were driving to the comic book store. A truck disregarded a red traffic light and collided with Leonard's car." His voice is strangely flat, even for Sheldon. He can't meet her eyes. "The driver was drunk."

She feels a strange tremor go through her body. "What about Leonard?"

Sheldon doesn't say anything.

She walks two more steps in, so that she's almost touching Sheldon. "What about Leonard."

"He…he…" His voice cracks. "I'm so sorry, Penny."

"What do you mean?" She can't breathe. Oh God, she'll never breathe again. She wants Sheldon to start making some damn sense.

His voice is so soft she can hardly hear him. "I tried to save him. I attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation but it was unsuccessful."

It's only then that she notices that Sheldon's clothes are covered with bloodstains, splotches of reddish brown against his Green Lantern t-shirt.

She can't picture it. It's not possible. Leonard is gone.

No.

"Oh, Sheldon." She gathers him close in her arms, but he stands rigidly, his arms at his sides.

This is not happening.

"I tried, Penny." His voice cracks again. "I tried."

*

By the time they get back to Sheldon and Leonard's apartment (oh my God, it's just Sheldon's apartment now), Howard and Raj are there, waiting outside the door with bags of Chinese food. She supposes this is the geek equivalent of bringing casseroles to the bereaved in their time of mourning.

As soon as they get inside, Raj throws his arms around her and hugs her. "I'm so, so sorry," he says.

"You spoke!" says Howard. "You spoke to Penny!"

"Whatever... I don't have time for social anxiety right now."

Sheldon walks right past them all like they don't exist, goes to the bathroom and shuts the door behind him.

"Is he okay?" Raj asks.

She shrugs and sits down on the couch. Maybe if she sits really, really still this will all go away. Maybe she'll wake up from this ridiculous nightmare.

Howard tries to give her a carton of kung pao chicken and she pushes it away. She does accept the white wine in a Princess Leia glass he offers and she's oddly touched that they thought to pick up some wine for her.

Raj begins unashamedly crying—loud, ragged wails. Howard pulls him close and they rock back and forth, sobbing together.

Penny can't cry. She can't feel anything. She feels like her entire brain was injected with Novocain.

She hears Sheldon come out of the bathroom and the sound of his bedroom door closing behind him.

"What do we do now?" asks Howard, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

"I don't know." Maybe if she drinks enough of this wine something constructive will come to her.

"Someone needs to call his parents," Raj says, sniffling.

"Oh, God," she breathes.

"I could do it," offers Howard. "Unless you want to, Penny."

She shakes her head. She can think of at least a million things she'd like to do more than tell Leonard's parents that their son is dead.

Raj says, "Do you think Sheldon would do it?"

"I don't think he could handle it," she says. "I mean, he was practically in the fetal position in the back of my car the whole way home."

Her spine stiffens when she hears Sheldon's bedroom door open and his footfalls on the floorboards. He's changed into a fresh clothes—a Spider Man shirt this time around. He sits down on the couch.

"I did it," he says.

"Did what, honey?" she says.

"I called his mother. I told her." He stares off into space.

"Oh, Sheldon," she says. "I'm so proud of you for doing that."

He nods as if she's speaking a foreign language and he only understands the gist of what she's saying.

"What do we do now?" asks Howard.

Sheldon shakes his head as if he's clearing the cobwebs collected there. He stands up and starts passing out Xbox controllers to all of them. "It's Halo Night," he says. "We play Halo."

"Do you think that's a good idea, dude?" Raj says.

Raj has a lovely speaking voice, she thinks. She wishes she could hear it more often.

"Leonard would want us to play," Sheldon says firmly.

So this is how we'll mourn, she thinks, picking up her controller. By killing each other in a fictional galaxy, millions of light years away.

*

She tries to find a comfortable position in bed—on her back, curled up like a shrimp, lying on her belly. She surrounds herself with her favorite stuffed animals. She turns the fan on and turns it off. She opens and shuts windows. Nothing works. Her lower back and legs ache as if they've absorbed the impact of a car accident.

Three months ago, she broke up with Leonard. It wasn't a dramatic thing like it usually is in her love life. No dishes were thrown. Instead, she sat him down on the couch one night and explained, as gently as she could, that she didn't think it was working out and could they please just try to be friends again?

She remembers the confused expression on his face, as if he couldn't believe that this was happening, that they were destined to be the great love of the century. And now she remembers, with shame, that he cried, big, fat tears running down his face. And how she held him close and told him she was so, so sorry.

She wishes she'd just stuck with it. Leonard was good to her. He didn't bring random women home from the club and fuck them in her bed. He never stole her ATM card and withdrew $700 to pay his outstanding gym membership fees. He never told her she looked fat in her jeans.

And if she'd just stuck with it for a few more months, Leonard would have died believing he was loved.

She's not sure if she believes in God. She grew up Catholic—Mass every Sunday rain or shine, Catholic school through eighth grade, Family Rosary Night. But she never felt any connection, any sign that God or Jesus or the Virgin Mary were anything more than nice stories meant to make rowdy children behave.

Tonight she wants to believe in God. She wants to believe that Heaven exists and Leonard is there, happy and secure at last.

She sits up in bed and wraps her arms around her knees. "Dear God," she whispers. "Please exist."

*

This is the first morning in a long time she's absolutely, positively not wanted to get out of bed. Ever.

But she knows she has to. There are probably a thousand practical details to deal with in the face of death and if she doesn't deal with them, who will?

She pads across the hall, still in her robe, hair uncombed, coffee cup in hand. She can't even begin to contemplate dealing with any of it without milk for her coffee.

Sheldon opens the door, fully dressed. She wonders if he even went to bed last night. The bandage has been removed from his face and in its place is an ugly-looking gash. His bruises have deepened in color, ugly purple and olive green against his pale skin.

"Good morning, Penny," he says like it’s just another morning in their lives. "I trust you have come for milk for your coffee?"

She grunts something in reply and pushes past him to get to the fridge.

Sheldon sits down at his desk and picks up the phone. She pours a dollop of milk into her coffee and stirs it with her index finger. For a long while, she stands in the kitchen area, watching Sheldon swing into action.

He calls Boston, New York, even Texas. She hears words like _power of attorney_, _cremation_, _obituary_ and _visitation_. Sheldon speaks in crisp, authoritative tones to the coroner's office, a funeral home, a number of Caltech offices. He jots down notes on a yellow legal pad with a red Sharpie. He appears to send and receive a number of emails.

Her legs grow tired and she plops down on the couch, sipping her now-cool coffee, staring in disbelief at this Sheldon she's never seen before. He's so _competent_. True, she knows he couldn't have earned two doctorate degrees before he was old enough to drink by being a bumbling fool, but she has the bad habit of viewing him as something of a helpless child in the face of hard times.

He hangs up the phone.

"Are you all right, sweetie?" she asks. "Can I make you something to eat?"

"I had a bowl of 100% bran cereal for breakfast. It should keep me sufficiently satiated for at least two more hours. Besides, you don't cook."

He has a point, although she's fairly sure she can make scrambled eggs. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Sheldon stands up, something that apparently hurts him to do, although he tries to hide it. She remembers that his ribs are bruised and he's refused to take the Vicodin the ER doctor prescribed. "There isn't sufficient time to share our grief, Penny. Please get dressed. I have a full day of errands ahead of me and I need you to drive."

Penny swallows the last of her coffee, silently agreeing with Sheldon. There _isn't_ enough time to mourn and perhaps that's for the best. Maybe keeping busy is the one thing that will keep them both from falling apart.


	2. Chapter 2

She stands in front of her open closet, completely unsure of what to wear. What do you wear to the memorial service of one of your best friends/ex-boyfriends? She's pretty certain Miss Manners hasn't covered this in her column.

Not black, she thinks. Leonard would hate for her to wear black to his memorial. He always liked her best in bright, fresh colors.

The pink strapless dress is too slutty. The flowered one makes her look like one of the ladies from the Maternity of Mary Mothers' Club. Finally she uncovers a pale blue sundress that covers her knees and isn't too low cut, but doesn't make her look like a soccer mom, either. She remembers how she wore it on one of her first real dates with Leonard, when they drove to Santa Barbara and ate lunch outside at a little Italian place. The sun was bright that afternoon and Leonard sunburned his nose and later she rubbed aloe vera on it and kissed him during the slow parts of _The Two Towers_.

She covers the circles under her eyes with generous amounts of concealer and finds her sunglasses under the sofa.

She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror, fussing with her hair. She takes a deep breath.

You can do this, she tells herself. You can go to Leonard's funeral. You can get through this.

Across the hall, she finds Sheldon in his new gray suit. Yesterday, Penny helped him pick it out at the Macy's at Paseo Colorado after she convinced him that the plaid sports jacket needed to be permanently retired. Now he looks too grown up to her. She wishes he could be himself and wear a superhero t-shirt.

He fiddles with a burgundy silk tie, also new.

"Do you need help?" she asks.

He grimaces. "I'll get it. Eventually."

"Let me help," she says. "My dad used to let me tie his tie."

Sheldon relents with a small sigh. She has to stand on tiptoe to reach him. She knots the slippery fabric. Sheldon smells good, like Ivory soap and shaving cream.

"Thank you," he says, after she adjusts the knot.

"Any time."

And she doesn't really know why, but she blushes.

*

This isn't the good kind of funeral. Not that there are any good funerals, she thinks, mentally correcting the word funeral with memorial service since everyone has been using the latter, but it's not the kind where the deceased has lived a long, full life and has passed on peacefully, surrounded by his many descendents. This is the memorial of a man who didn't even reach thirty, who hadn't yet received tenure or published the book he was working on, who never married or had children. The kind of memorial where the weeping is epidemic, where people cling to each other like life rafts and sob before the service has even started.

It's an obscenely bright and sunny day, real sunglasses weather. Much too beautiful for this sort of thing. The chairs are set up on the Beckman Mall at Caltech, as if for a graduation ceremony. It seems that half the campus is here, plus a decent showing from the Cheesecake Factory and some of her actor friends, thanks to the powers of Facebook. Leonard's family is sitting across the aisle, all dressed in black. His mother stares straight ahead as if she's riding to work on the subway.

She'd gone over to greet Mrs. Hofstadter, who pretended not to remember her. "Oh yes," she finally said. "Leonard's little girlfriend." And then she hugged Sheldon for a good five minutes.

Leonard's father was friendlier, small like his son was, with a frizz of dark curls surrounding the bald spot on the back of his head. He'd profusely thanked Penny and Sheldon for all they'd done in the absence of Leonard's family.

Sheldon sits next to her, sitting up so straight that Penny's sure his spine isn't touching the back of the folding chair. She swears she can hear his heart beating. When she glances over at him she can tell his jaw is clenched.

A string quartet, Leonard's regular group minus Leonard and plus a last-minute cello substitute named Hwang, begins playing something pretty. Leonard tried to teach her about classical music but she always laughed and told him that it made her sleepy.

Leonard's uncle, who is a minister of some sort, is conducting the service. At the planning meeting the afternoon before, a bleak affair held at a Denny's near LAX, Sheldon had made it perfectly clear to the uncle that there was to be no mention of God or Heaven (or, spare us all, angels) since Leonard was an atheist and Sheldon didn't want any hypocrisy at this event. The uncle had merely shrugged sadly and asked the waitress for a refill of his coffee. In the end, he was cool with it, though.

There's a small table up front near the podium, covered with a white cloth, and Penny tries not to look at it because there's a plain brass box on the table and inside the box are Leonard's ashes.

She hopes it didn't hurt when he burned.

Dr. Gabelhauser gets up and talks about how Leonard was a productive member of the scientific community and a valuable member of the Caltech team and Penny has to make an effort to shut her ears because she _knows_ that Leonard didn't like Gablehauser much and the feeling was pretty much mutual. She pokes Sheldon in the arm when she hears him mutter insults under his breath.

Leslie plays a solo on her violin and while Penny doesn't really like Leslie, she has to admit that Leslie is really good. And it might be the light, or the angle of where she's sitting, but Penny could swear that Leslie has tears in her eyes.

Leonard's brother, Michael, is tall and skinny, almost more of a Cooper than a Hofstadter. He tells a funny story about how he and Leonard almost blew up the garage one summer after Leonard got a chemistry set for his birthday. No wonder Leonard and Sheldon were best friends, she thinks. Everyone laughs during Michael's story, except their father, who cries. Penny's heart lurches for him.

She wonders when she'll ever be able to cry for Leonard. And if there's something seriously wrong with her because she can't.

At the Denny's meeting, Leonard's uncle had asked her if she'd like to get up and say anything and she'd shook her head and said no. That she didn't think she'd be able to keep it together in front of all those people.

What she didn't tell them at Denny's is all she wants to say about Leonard and to Leonard is how sorry she is that she couldn't love him the way he wanted to be loved. And how do you say that in front of all of his family and friends?

But now she regrets saying no while Howard tells tales of Klingon camp, paintball tournaments, all-night _Deep Space Nine_ marathons, and how Leonard was always there as a friend for him no matter what. He talks about Leonard's generosity and how he let Howard sleep on his couch for two weeks straight after his mother threw him out for piercing his ear.

She thinks about how much Leonard's friends loved him and the tears almost come. She blots at her eyes with a tissue just in case.

And now Sheldon stands up. She squeezes his arm before he walks up to the podium. He looks very tall in his new suit and very stern, like a school principal about to dress down the entire student body about smoking in the bathrooms.

He clears his throat. "Those of you who know me, which I believe is the vast majority of the congregants today, know that I do not excel in speaking of my personal feelings. However, you who do know me know that Leonard was my best friend. And that his passing is almost the most tragic occurrence I can contemplate.

"In lieu of a speech where I attempt to illustrate my personal sentiment for Leonard, I will read a poem by Dylan Thomas. I would prefer to allow Mr. Thomas to speak for me on this occasion."

Sheldon's voice has started out shaky, but it has gained strength as he speaks. He shuts his eyes for a brief moment and then opens them. Penny holds her breath as he begins to recite a poem from memory.

"And death shall have no dominion.  
Dead mean naked they shall be one  
With the man in the wind and the west moon;  
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,  
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;  
Though they go mad they shall be sane,  
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  
Though lovers be lost love shall not;  
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.  
Under the windings of the sea  
They lying long shall not die windily;  
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,  
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;  
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,  
And the unicorn evils run them through;  
Split all ends up they shan't crack;  
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.  
No more may gulls cry at their ears  
Or waves break loud on the seashores;  
Where blew a flower may a flower no more  
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;  
Through they be mad and dead as nails,  
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;  
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,  
And death shall have no dominion."

Sheldon sits back down next to her and she squeezes his arm again, smiling at him. She's so damn proud of him, how he's managed take charge of everything, how he's kept going and going without stopping over the last four days, how he's somehow created something beautiful out of tragedy.

Now the tears _are_ falling, just a few. She pinches the bridge of her nose to stop them.

The minister says a few more words, something about acceptance, and faith, and friendship. It all washes over her as she pictures Leonard's face and how he would smile crookedly at her.

It's over now and everyone stands up.

Leonard won't be back, she thinks as she hugs Howard. She can't believe how much that thought still surprises her.

*

Back in Nebraska, after a funeral and the gravesite service, everyone goes back to the church and gathers in the basement for a lunch. It's usually potluck, everyone in town contributing a dish—tuna noodle casserole with Ritz crackers on top, green Jell-O mold, Brown n' Serve rolls.

A California geek funeral means a party, sort of. People come over to Sheldon's apartment (she still has a hard time referring to it as Sheldon's apartment, even in her head). Earlier in the day, Howard and Raj went to Trader Joe's and picked up a bunch of different crunchy snacks and dips and breads and lots of bottles of Two Buck Chuck and weird flavors of soda like blood orange and tamarind. Pizza and Thai food are delivered. There's even a non-dairy cheesecake. All the food that Leonard loved.

And it's a pretty excellent party when all is said and done, the kind of party Leonard would have liked to have held himself. Once the relatives and Caltech higher-ups have said their goodbyes, it does start feeling like a real party after the iPod is turned up and half the wine is gone. The physicist types tell stories that completely go over her head about Leonard and various experiments gone wrong. Her friends hug Penny and keep her wineglass full. Raj has had a glass or two himself and appears to be chatting up her friend Kelsey. There's still crying but a lot more laughing and she's glad for it. She's glad that people are remembering Leonard with fond laughter. She's even glad that a few are playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Throughout the ebb and flow of the afternoon and evening, she keeps her eye on Sheldon. They don't really talk, but she catches his eye and smiles at him from across the room. He seems to be all right. He looks pale (but then again, when _doesn't_ he?) but he's talking to people instead of hiding in his room, as she half-feared he would.

At one point, Leslie corners Penny near the bathroom and drunkenly cries on her shoulder, blubbering something about how Leonard was so great and why didn't she see it until he was dead? Penny pats her on the back until Leslie runs off to puke in the bathroom. When Leslie gets out, Penny leads her to Leonard's room and lays Leslie down on his bed, telling her to sleep it off.

*

Somewhere around nine, Penny feels overwhelmed by the body heat in the apartment, the four glasses of wine she's drunk, the energy of three dozen people in mourning. She goes to her apartment and shuts the door behind her, sits on the couch for a bit, trying to catch her breath. She puts her head between her legs to get the blood flowing.

She changes out of the blue dress and into a pair of shorts and a tank top and splashes cold water on her face in her bathroom. She almost feels normal again.

When she goes back across the hall, people are starting to leave. The wine is mostly gone, the food table an absolute wreck. The apartment smells like guacamole and egg rolls.

Leslie staggers out with Kate, her roommate, who seems sober, thank God. "Make her drink lots of water," orders Penny, who has lots of experience with hangovers and knows Leslie probably doesn't.

Raj and Howard are the last to leave. They even clean up the kitchen a little, although it's definitely not going to be up to Sheldon's standards. Oh well, it's a nice gesture.

"Are you going to be all right?" Raj asks. He still seems able to talk to her and Penny's glad.

She shrugs. She can't even remember what all right feels like anymore.

They offer to stay the night to keep an eye on Sheldon, who seems to have disappeared, but she shoos them out and tells them to get some rest.

She shuts the door and takes a deep breath. Time to find Sheldon.

She knocks on his bedroom door, which is closed, but there's no answer.

"Sheldon," she calls out. "It's me. Can I come in?"

She hears something muffled in response and figures it's close enough to "yes" and opens the door.

He's sitting at the edge of his bed, staring down at his hands, which rest on his knees. He's still wearing the white button-down shirt and the tie, but the jacket is off.

She stands in the doorway. "Hey there," she says.

Sheldon looks up and even in the dim lamplight she can see that tears are rolling down his face. She's not sure she's ever seen him cry before.

In an instant, she's all the way across the room and by his side on the bed. He doesn't tell her that she can't be in his room or sit on his bed. He doesn't push her away when she reaches for him and begins kissing away the tears on his bruised cheeks, salty and warm.

She pulls him close and he doesn't push her away, doesn't stiffen like he has the few times she's hugged him before.

To her surprise, she finds herself kissing him on his closed lips and (this is the strangest part of all) he opens his mouth to her. And oh, God, their tongues meet and this is so, so wrong but it feels so good and right and to her surprise she doesn't stop and he doesn't stop her, either.


	3. Chapter 3

She doesn't know how she got here, in Sheldon's bedroom, on his bed, and how she ended up kissing him and he ended up kissing her back. Everything is hazy even though she's not really drunk. Maybe she's dreaming, after all.

She doesn't stop and he doesn't stop her, either, and she just can't believe that instead of pulling away from her and making an "eww, girl cooties" face, Sheldon's hands are at the back of her head, pressing her face closer to him and he's groaning like a man in the desert who has found water at last.

And she's trying to be gentle, to not bump the yellowing bruises on his face or the scab from his cut, but it's hard to remember to be careful when he sucks on her lower lip and kisses her closed eyelids and the hollow of her throat—and can this really be Sheldon?

They fall to the mattress and she's on top of him. She doesn't want to hurt him but she's pressed up against his body, his bruised ribs underneath the white button-down shirt and tie, and he's hard against her thigh. Sheldon's hard, she thinks. He's a human being, a man, and I gave him a hard-on. This fact makes her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

All she wants to do if forget, to drown in him, just to forget for a while that everything has gone straight to hell. His hand slips under her shirt and over her bra and she shivers at his touch. He's not rough and grabby like so many other guys are. He touches her easily, methodically, as if he wants to map and catalogue every inch of her. He's no longer awkward, superior Sheldon. He's just a man now, in bed with a woman, driven by instinct.

She unknots his tie, unbuttons his shirt and they somehow wrestle it off, along with his undershirt. The bruises on his chest and his left arm stand out in sharp relief in the dim light from the lamp. She touches them softly, one by one. He must have been in terrible pain the first few days but he didn't ever let on, which must be a first for him, the hypochondriac of the century. As far as she knows, the bottle of painkillers in the bathroom cabinet has never even been opened.

She pulls her tank top over her head and unhooks the front clasp of her bra. She brushes her body against his chest. For the first time she feels the sensation of his skin touching hers. He's so warm. She rests her head for a moment on his chest, listening to the skittering of his heartbeat, and she imagines what it would like to feel him deep inside her, for them to move together. She's so wet, she wants him so much, and she is utterly unable to believe that _Sheldon_ can do this to her.

He tastes like orange soda and he tastes just like she'd always imagined him to taste, except she never imagined it, because who'd think that she'd ever be kissing Sheldon or that Leonard would be dead in a car accident, his ashes in a box currently sitting on Sheldon's desk in the living room?

That's when everything turns wrong, ugly and dark. Because Leonard is dead and Sheldon's bruised and broken and this is so, so _bad_. Like going to hell bad, if she believed in hell, which she doesn't, really. Panic rises up her spine and spreads through her chest and arms.

She can't do this. She can't do this to Sheldon. He's not some disposable fuck-toy, not just another one of her thirty-six hour flings. This is _Sheldon_ and she's not going to hurt him like that. She can't. They're both too broken to make anything good of this situation.

"Sheldon, stop," she says, lifting her head. "We can't do this," she says, not quite able to meet his eyes.

"Penny," he says and she's surprised at how much he sounds like a man, not a boy.

She sits up, brushes her hair out of her face. "I'm sorry, Sheldon, but we can't." And her face actually hurts from trying to hold back the tears. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I'm not in any physical pain."

"That's _not_ what I meant." God, he can be so clueless. She finds her tank top on the floor and puts it on. She stands up, feeling like she can't quite catch her breath. She needs to get the fuck out of this room before she really messes things up.

He sits up, wincing a little. Not in any physical pain, her ass. "Don't go, Penny," he says, eyes pleading. She's never seen him look like this, so nakedly vulnerable. So needy for human contact. But she can't give it to him. Not now, as much as her body and her rebellious hormones would like to. She has nothing to give.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles and practically runs out of the room.

Before she leaves the apartment, she steals two of Sheldon's Vicodin from the bathroom.

*

She gets in the shower and turns the water up as hot as she can stand it. Penny lets the water wash over her, hoping it will somehow wash away her shame. Her legs are shaking and her heart is beating a thousand beats per minute.

Under the spray, she finally lets herself cry, her forehead against the white tine in the shower stall. For Leonard, for Sheldon, for herself.

And if he triple-knocks on her door, she doesn't hear it.

*

The Vicodin takes her down into a thick, dreamless sleep, the first real sleep she's had in days.

She wakes in the early afternoon, sunshine spilling in through her windows.

Her eyes open and she feels a sickening wave roll through her stomach. Leonard is dead. She almost slept with Sheldon last night and ended up running away. Everything has gone terribly, terribly wrong and there's no fixing it.

Usually she can charm her way out of most bad situations, but there’s no smiling and flirting out of this one.

Maybe coffee will help. She gets out of bed and stumbles into the living room. Right away, she notices a neatly folded piece of yellow paper lying on the floor near the door.

She opens it, her fingers shaking. The note is written in Sheldon's curiously graceful handwriting.

_Dear Penny,_

_I can't be here right now. At this particular moment, I need some time to properly process everything that has happened._

_I will return._

_Be well._

_Sincerely,_

_Sheldon Cooper_

Penny finds herself running across the hall and knocking on the door. Maybe he hasn't left yet. Maybe he'll still be there and they can somehow talk about everything, properly grieve together.

There's no answer.

*

She tries not to worry at first.

She's sure that he went home to Texas, to return to his mother's love and pie for a few days. She'd do the same if she were Sheldon.

Three days later, she wakes with a blurry margarita hangover on the couch to hear some sort of obnoxious banging. She opens her eyes and groans. What was she thinking, ordering a fourth margarita last night with the girls? But drinking helps, sometimes. It softens the edges of remembering Leonard.

The banging noises seem to be coming from across the hall. She finds her robe under a pile of magazines and pulls it on. Her heart is beating wildly. Is he finally home?

The door to 4A is open but when she peeks her head in, she spots three men, packing and hauling cardboard boxes. They're wearing t-shirts that say "Ace Moving Company." Sheldon is nowhere in sight.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Who are you?" says one of the movers. He drops one of the boxes on the floor with a crash and she cringes. Sheldon would pitch a fit if he saw this.

"I'm the neighbor. And friends with the guys...the guy who lives here. Is he here? Sheldon Cooper?"

The moving man shrugs. "That's the name on the order but he's not here. We're moving all this stuff to storage."

She thanks them and slinks back across the hall. She feels like she might throw up.

*

Raj calls her an hour later. Raj has _never_ called her before, but then again, until a few days ago he was unable to speak to her at all.

"Leave of absence," he says, his voice sounding breathy and excited.

She puts down the bottle of pink nail polish she's using to paint her toenails. Pedicure as therapy. "What?"

"I just heard from Gablehauser. Sheldon took a leave of absence."

"What?"

"Please stop saying 'what,'" Raj says and he sort of sounds like Sheldon then. "I'm just telling you what I know."

"Did he say when Sheldon will be back?"

"No, Gabelehauser just said that Sheldon would be gone for a while for personal reasons."

"God," she exhales. "Do you think he's okay?"

"I don't know," Raj says and he sounds as sad as she feels. "I don't know."

She thinks about apartment 4A, which felt more like home than her own apartment for so many years, full of life and bickering and bad Chinese food and movie marathons. And how it's now empty and echoing. There's already a For Rent sign in front of the building and someone will probably snap it up soon, despite the perpetually broken elevator and neglectful landlords. She can't believe how much she hates that thought.

*

After a week of hearing nothing from Sheldon, she gives in and digs up the phone number Leonard once wrote down, in case of emergency.

She figures this is pretty close to an emergency. She just might lose her mind if she doesn't know if he's all right.

There's an answer on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Is this Mrs. Cooper? This is Penny, Sheldon's neighbor from across the hall? We met that time you came out here to see Sheldon?" she hears herself babble.

"Oh, honey, hi! I'm so sorry about Leonard. It's so sad. My whole prayer group got together the other night to pray for his soul."

"That was really nice of you," she says. She takes a deep breath. "Say, have you heard from Sheldon lately?"

"I sure have," Mrs. Cooper says, sounding weary. "He called me a few days ago and said he was going to take some time off, maybe travel some. That he needed to do some thinking."

Penny sighs. So he really is gone. "I'm worried about him."

"I am, too. But you have to understand—when my boy is hurting, and he's hurting _real_ bad right now, he's like a little wounded animal. He needs to go find a hidey-hole in the woods until he heals. He's been like that since he was a boy."

I caused some of that hurt, Penny thinks. It's not a pretty thought.

"If you talk to him, will you tell him that we miss him?" She bites her lip for a second. "And that we all love him?"

"I surely will," his mother says.

Penny has no idea what kind of love it is, but she loves Sheldon. She really does. It's weird to hear those words in her head. For so long, she couldn't stand him. He was a thorn in her side. After a while, she felt a sort of amused affection for Sheldon and his many odd quirks. And then, in the weirdest kind of way, he became one of her best friends. He stayed up all night to help her make Penny Blossoms. He _drove_ her to the hospital and sang "Soft Kitty" to her and even made her pancakes the next morning. He tried to teach her physics.

And now? She doesn't know how to classify her love for Sheldon. But when she thinks about how it felt to kiss him, goose bumps rise on her arms.

*

A month later she receives a battered-looking padded envelope in the mail, postmarked Kathmandu.

When she opens it, she finds a white Tibetan prayer flag. There's no note.

It kind of smells like chai from Starbucks and yet, she swears it smells like Sheldon, too.

She unfurls the white cotton cloth, traces the intricate black lettering and designs with her fingertip. She imagines Sheldon on a Himalayan mountaintop. Maybe he scattered Leonard's ashes there under the blue sky.

And even though Sheldon doesn't believe in God, Penny wonders if he prayed for Leonard.


	4. Chapter 4

Everything changes the morning after Halloween with one phone call.

The ringtone on her cell phone wakes her on the couch, where she passed out the night before still in her Kara Thrace costume. Howard and Raj had taken her to a Caltech Halloween party that turned out to be surprisingly excellent, especially the toxic-looking green punch.

"Mrmph," she mumbles into the phone, praying it isn't work asking her to come in on her day off. Because the idea of cheesecake right now is the worst idea ever.

"Hi, Penny!" says a sickeningly cheerful and awake-sounding woman. "It's Jane Jesperson. Remember me?"

Penny sits up, her head pounding. Sure she remembers Jane. Jane directed Penny in one of the only decent plays she's ever been in. But that was like four years ago and she had heard that Jane moved to Minneapolis. What could she possibly want with Penny? "Of course I do," she says, trying to sound livelier. "What's going on?"

"I'm really excited. I'm directing my play, _All's Fair_ this winter with the Dilemma Theater. It's a small company, but they've got a great reputation around here."

"That's fabulous!" She always liked Jane a lot. She was a really good director and seemed to believe in Penny as an actress, something of a rarity in this town. But why is Jane calling _her_ about all this?

"Anyhow, the reason why I'm calling you is I had a really weird dream last night."

"Uh-huh…" This is getting stranger and stranger.

"I dreamed that you were the lead in my play and it was a huge hit. The dream was so intense, just like real life. And when I woke up, I realized you'd be perfect to play Mara."

"Really?" Penny's forehead wrinkles.

"Yes, really. Will you audition?"

"But I'm in Pasadena and you're in Minneapolis." And I can't afford to fly halfway across the country for an audition, she thinks.

"Yeah, I thought about that. I don't want to make you come all the way out here for just an audition. How about if I send you the script and then you send me a videotape? There are a couple of speeches in the play I'd like to see you read."

"Are you serious?" All this, based on a _dream_ Jane had?

"Totally," Jane says firmly. "It was a really weird dream."

*

By the time Penny has showered and eaten a grilled bologna and Kraft singles sandwich (her time-tested, all purpose hangover cure), Jane has emailed her the play. She prints out the whole thing, which seems to take _forever_ on her cranky old printer. She clips the pages together and drives to Starbucks, where she can get her caffeine fix and burn off the last traces of hangover with the warm afternoon sunshine.

The play is a drama about a conservative, Minnesota Lutheran family, with some comic touches. Mara is the oldest daughter, who shames her parents when she's kicked out of her strict Lutheran college because she's pregnant. Her brother, Eric, makes things worse by coming out of the closet.

Penny reads the play through three times at Starbucks, barely managing to touch her caramel Frappuccino. Her heart beats faster and faster as she turns the pages. Jane was right. This role is perfect for her. She can do this. She knows it like she knows her own name.

*

The next three days, when she's not working, Penny lives with this play. She spends hours marking lines with a highlighter pen. She curls up on the couch and closes her eyes, imagining what it would be like to be the perfect daughter, now in disgrace. In her own way, Penny _was_ the perfect child in her family. Her sister dropped out of high school to live with her boyfriend who was fifteen years older. Her brother was dealing weed by tenth grade. Penny was a cheerleader, in all the plays at school, got decent grades. She once heard her mother say to her aunt, "At least one of them turned out okay."

By the end of the third day, she has the entire script memorized.

*

Raj comes over with his digital video camera. Howard had wanted to come along, too, but she'd firmly said no, knowing that he'd distract her with a million jokes about amateur porn.

At first, she's embarrassed to be acting in front of Raj, who has gone mute in honor of the importance of the occasion. She keeps breaking down in hysterical giggles.

She goes to the bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror. "Get serious," she tells herself, "for the first time in your life."

She thinks about Mara, pregnant and afraid to tell her parents, who think she's the ideal, virginal daughter. She remembers when she thought she was pregnant senior year of high school and how she'd hyperventilate every time she imagined telling her own parents and how she cried with relief to find bloodstains in her panties before gym class.

Mara walks out into the living room, not Penny. She tells her story in front of the camera.

*

She uploads the scenes they shot to Mediafire and sends the link to Jane. She crosses her fingers and knocks on the wood door for luck.

And she waits. And waits and waits and waits.

She wonders why she ever thought she'd get this part. Or why she thought she might have talent after all. She'll have to wait tables for the rest of her life.

*

New people have moved into Leonard and Sheldon's apartment. No matter who lives there, it will always be guys' place to her.

They're a young couple, very nice. Penny meets them in the hallway and has a pleasant chat with them, but when they invite her in for a drink, she politely declines. She doesn't want to see how the apartment has changed. In her mind it's still stuffed full of comic books and mint-condition action figures and there will always be two whiteboards in the living room, covered with indecipherable squiggles in dry erase marker.

*

She gets the call just as she's pulling her car out of the Cheesecake Factory parking lot, her feet aching after a long shift.

"Hi, Penny," Jane says, sounding serious.

Penny feels like she might puke all over the car.

"How do you feel about spending the winter in Minneapolis?"

Penny almost breaks Jane's eardrum with her screaming.

*

Penny blows a good chunk of her practically nonexistent savings on getting the car fixed. It feels wrong somehow to see the Check Engine light turned off.

She says goodbye to the boys on a gorgeous December morning, warm and breezy. She hugs them tight and promises that she'll email/text/call/Skype every minute of the day and she'll be back before summer and they'll hardly have time to miss her. Howard and Raj send her off with Lemonheads and Red Vines, mix CDs and a canister of mace, just in case.

She tries not to look at the palm trees as she drives off because if she does that she'll start crying and that's no way to begin a new adventure in life.

*

There's a lot of time to think in the car on the long, long drive down endless highways but she doesn't want to think so she plays music really loud and sings along in her terrible voice. She doesn't have a future career in musical theater, that's for sure.

*

She stops off for two days to visit her parents. She hasn't been back in a while. It just gets too weird sometimes with her brother in jail and her sister married for the third time to a guy Penny hasn't even met and living in Grand Island with her four kids.

Still, it's good to be home for an early Christmas with her mother and dad. Her father takes her through the barns, introducing her to the new cows and horses. She misses Dynamite, her old horse. He was a glossy red-brown color and had a diamond-shaped white patch on his forehead. When she was feeling sad or lost, all she had to do was take Dynamite out for a long ride in the fields around their farm and everything seemed better, or at least possible, in the end.

It kind of cracks Penny up that after years of failure in Los Angeles, her mother is now gleefully introducing her daughter to everyone in town as, "You remember Penny, right? She's going to be in a big play in _Minneapolis_." Minneapolis can seem awfully glamorous when you're from small town Nebraska.

*

When she exits Highway 35 into Minneapolis, she spots a bank sign displaying the temperature. It's five degrees and the sky is a dull, leaden gray.

She's able to find Jane's place in South Minneapolis without much trouble, thanks to Jane's directions, which are detailed almost on a Sheldon level. She pulls in front of Jane's place, a stucco bungalow with a front yard drowning in snow. Jane comes running out the front door, bundled in an enormous red parka that swallows her small frame and wearing a matching stocking cap over her brown curls.

She throws her arms around Penny as if she's a long-lost sister. "Welcome home!" she shouts.

Penny shivers. She doesn't own a winter coat strong enough to deal with this level of cold.

This isn't my home, she thinks. But then again, neither is Pasadena anymore. Not since she lost both of them.

*

Jane has found her a place to stay, a studio apartment sublet from an actress on a national tour of _Les Miserables_ until summer. It's in an old brick building in a quasi-hip neighborhood Minneapolis called Uptown, full of coffeehouses, Asian fusion restaurants, and upscale piercing boutiques.

The apartment is on the fourth floor and there's no elevator. Somehow, this makes her glad.

It's weird moving into someone's apartment that's still filled with all of their furniture, their books, cupboards stuffed with their dishes and coffee mugs commemorating events Penny's never heard of. It's sort of like taking over someone's life, someone who seems to love English mysteries, herbal teas, and muted jewel tones for her furnishings. On the other hand, it definitely beats having to buy a bunch of stuff for just a few months.

The actress has an Xbox 360 hooked up to the TV. One day, just after moving in, Penny finds herself at Best Buy, purchasing _Halo 3_.

She tells herself that she'll see him again and when she does, she'll kick his _ass_.

*

She can't remember the last time she was so busy. This is a good thing, because when she's busy she can't mourn and if she doesn't mourn it means that Leonard isn't dead and Sheldon isn't gone.

The boys always talked about alternate universes. She likes to pretend that there is one, off in the distance somewhere, where the two of them are hanging out in their apartment, watching endless episodes of _Babylon 5_ and bickering about whose turn it is to call in the Chinese delivery order.

There are tons of rehearsals. She's also picked up some shifts at the Cheesecake Factory out at Southdale Mall, which kind of messes with her head since the restaurant is exactly the same as the one in Pasadena, only with everything on the opposite side. She keeps going through the wrong doors to the kitchen and the dishwashers yell at her Spanish.

At first, rehearsals seem like a disaster. The confidence she'd had in playing Mara, how she'd felt like she'd _inhabited_ her, flees in the face of the rest of the cast. They're real actors, even if it's only Minneapolis. They've all been in tons of plays and constantly talk about commercials they've been cast in or movies that are shooting in Minnesota that they're going to audition for. They're really nice to her, _everyone's_ nice in Minneapolis, but they're so sure of themselves that it gives her a stomachache every day before rehearsal. She's just this clueless, ditzy blonde with a scanty acting resume and she's never even been to college, let alone earned an MFA degree like half the cast.

Jane is great director. She challenges the cast to be the best they can be. She's full of all sorts of great suggestions and tips. She's motherly and sweet when she needs to be but screams at the top of her lungs at the actors if she has to.

One night, after rehearsal, Penny locks herself in the bathroom at the theater. She feels dizzy, sweaty. She sits down on the toilet and tries to breathe normally again. Jane is going to realize the mistake she made, casting Penny based on a freaky dream she had. She's going to be fired and have to return to Pasadena like the loser she is. What a mistake this was, thinking she could be taken seriously as an actress. She's no actress. She's just some girl who was good in the plays at her tiny Nebraska high school in comparison with all the local dolts, but put up against real actors? Forget it.

Finally, she feels like she'll be able to stand up without passing out again and creeps out of the bathroom, hoping that everybody else has gone home.

Jane is waiting outside the bathroom, smoking a cigarette in defiance of the NO SMOKING signs posted everywhere.

Penny tries to walk past Jane as if nothing's happened but Jane stills her with a hand at Penny's shoulder.

Here it comes, she thinks, bracing herself.

"Penny," Jane says. "When are you going to realize that you're the real thing?"

Penny shrugs like a sullen teen.

"You need to get over yourself. You're talented. Suck it up. Accept it."

"And what if I can't do it?" she says.

"Why ever would you think you can't do it?" Jane laughs. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Now, come on, let's go get a beer at the CC Club. My kid's got a cold that's made him the crankiest child alive and I can't stand to go home just yet."

*

She starts spending a lot of time at Jane's house. It's one of those comfortably messy houses with books all over the place and the stereo constantly playing something really weird, but cool. There's often some sort of stew or soup on the stove, bubbling away and making the air smell like garlic and herbs. It's the kind of house Penny would like to have some day.

Strangely enough, Jane's husband Michael is a math professor at the University of St. Thomas. He actually went to Caltech as an undergrad and he shudders his skinny shoulders as the thought of "that academic hothouse of torture," as he puts it. He has a whiteboard in his home office covered with equations and the sight of it makes Penny more homesick than anything else.

Jane and Michael have a three-year-old boy named Darwin. Darwin is short and stocky like his mother, with a head full of dark curls. He's obsessed with dinosaurs and gives her a crash course on the floor of his bedroom. "No, no, no!" he shouts in frustration. "That's not _Corythosaurus_. It's _Camptosaurus_. Can't you tell the difference?"

*

And then one day in rehearsal it all just clicks. Mara is back with her, living inside Penny and whispering her thoughts in Penny's ear.

Everyone seems relieved, Penny herself most of all.

*

She never thinks about Sheldon.

  
*

Okay, maybe she thinks about him. Just a little bit, though.

*

She's a total liar. She thinks about him a lot, late at night when she's at home in her little apartment and can't hide from her thoughts anymore.

Her place has a window seat and sometimes she wraps herself up in a blanket and sits in the window, drinking hot tea and looking out over Hennepin Avenue.

And she thinks about what a weird thing chemistry is. Chemistry, whatever that means, kept her bound to Kurt way longer than was good for her because whenever he touched her it sent electric shocks through her whole body. But with Leonard, the electricity never came, as much as she wanted it to. He did all the right things, touched her in all the ways that should have pleased her, but she never craved his hands on her, never longed for more after it was all over.

It feels like a betrayal thinking these things about poor Leonard.

And then there's Sheldon. Just the one time, that horrible night after Leonard's funeral but even now, months later, she can remember every rustling sound their bodies made on the bed, can still feel the smoothness of his warm skin against hers and how his mouth tasted. And she wonders how it was possible to feel so much for _Sheldon_, of all people.

Something deep inside her longs to be able to talk to him, to set things right again, to be able to try to salvage something good from the wreckage of Leonard's death. But that's the frustrating part. Sheldon is just gone, no forwarding address.

Every so often she Googles him and nothing new ever comes up.

*

She sends an email to Raj:

_I don't think we ever appreciated how good we had it, you know? All of us just hanging out and having so much fun doing totally stupid stuff and we'd complain and fight sometimes cause we didn't know how rare and awesome that kind of friendship is._

*

Opening night and it's warm enough that the snow is starting to melt outside and the sidewalks are a mess of puddles and mud. Everyone says it’s a false spring and that there will be another snowstorm before it's all over.

She sits in her dressing room, trying to contain her nerves. You can do it, she tells herself, hearing Jane's voice in her head. You're talented. You're the real thing.

The room is full of flowers. There's a bunch of really pretty pink tulips from Raj and Howard. Their thoughtfulness makes her miss them with sharp, almost physical pang. Yellow roses from her parents, who couldn't make it because her father has the flu. The smell of all the flowers makes her ever so slightly sick. It reminds her of when she went to the funeral home with Sheldon to make cremation arrangements.

She fusses with her hair, removes her earrings and puts them back on, removes them again, puts them back on.

Twenty more minutes. She might go insane.

Kim, one of the company interns, pokes her head in. "Hey, Penny, I feel really bad but I forgot to tell you when you came in that there's a package for you." She hands over a small, brown package, surprisingly heavy.

It's postmarked Juneau, Alaska.

Penny opens it and finds a packet of plaster. She squints at it in confusion. Who would send her _plaster_, of all things?

She turns the package over and spies a line of familiar handwriting scrawled across the wrapper.

_For your cast when you break your leg._


	5. Chapter 5

She stands in the wings, waiting for her cue to step onstage.

Her breath catches in her throat. She's forgotten all of her lines. She's going to make a total fool of herself in front of a full opening night house.

This is bullshit, she tells herself. You know these lines backwards and forwards. You know Mara as well as any of your girlfriends. It's going to be wonderful.

She steps out onto the stage, the lights almost blinding her eyes and it _is_ wonderful.

*

It feels like there are million people in her dressing room, all kissing her and telling her how amazing she was. She’s spilled champagne on the front of her costume and there are mascara rings under her eyes from sweat and maybe a few tears.

Holy shit. She’s an actress. For real.

The dressing room door opens again and she sees Howard and Raj, grinning like maniacs.

"You guyssssssss!" she shrieks, the tears starting up again. She throws her arms around them and hugs them close, not wanting to ever let go of them again.

*

She can’t sleep. She may never sleep again. She sits up in bed, listening to Howard snoring from the air mattress on the floor. In the darkness, she can just make out Raj curled up on the loveseat.

There’s too much adrenaline coursing through her body from the applause, the cheering, all the champagne toasts at the party after the show at Solera. Joe Dowling, the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater, one of the best companies in the country, showed up at the party and told her she had real promise and that he hoped they could work together some time.

Holy shit.

She gets out of bed and pads to the kitchen. She doesn’t want to wake the guys in the other room so she doesn’t turn on the overhead light. She finds some cheese and crackers, opens up a Diet Coke and sits down at the little table to eat her midnight snack.

"Penny?" she hears and she jumps at the sound of Raj’s voice.

"Did I wake you up? Sorry."

He walks into the kitchen, wearing his pajamas, his curly hair standing on end. "No big deal," he says and she’s so happy that he’s still able to talk to her. She never really got to know him over the years because of his selective mutism, although she’s just beginning to through email and the occasional IM chat.

"Want some crackers?"

He takes a handful. "Can’t sleep?"

"Nope." She puts a slice of cheddar on a Wheat Thin. "Too much excitement."

"You were wonderful. Leonard would have been so proud of you."

Something lurches in her heart. "I wish he could have been here tonight."

"Yeah, me, too."

"I miss him, Raj. I miss him a lot."

"Yup."

She plays with the tab on the top of her Diet Coke can. "I miss Sheldon," she says.

"I know. I used to complain about him all the time, but I really miss him, too."

"I wish he'd just come back already."

Raj looks at her, tilting his head a bit as if he's trying to figure something out. "Are you in love with him, Penny?"

"What? Where did you get that from?"

"You're not deaf. You heard what I said."

"That's the craziest thing I've ever heard," she says, her facing growing hot. "In love with Sheldon. As if."

"Don't bullshit me, dude. Every time we talk, you ask about him. Have I heard from him? Where do I think he is? Is he okay?"

"I'm _not_ in love with him, Raj. This is Sheldon we're talking about. I don't know if he could love anyone back, anyhow."

"I don't know," Raj says, shrugging. "I think that underneath all his compulsive behavior he could have a great capacity to love."

She spills a little of her soda on the table. Her hands are shaking. Weird. She jumps up to grab a sponge from the sink. "Whoa, Raj. That's really deep."

"I'm a deep guy. You just never had the opportunity to find out before."

"Good point." She grabs a open bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge. Might as well start drinking all over again. "But I'm definitely not in love with Sheldon."

"Whatever." Raj takes the glass she pours for him.

"_Really_." She takes a big swallow of the cool wine. She can't look Raj in the eye. "I'm not. I think. I don't know…maybe a little."

Raj just looks at her, looking amused and concerned at the same time.

"Okay, yeah," she continues. "I'm in something but I don't know what it is and it's Sheldon and what the hell?"

"How did this happen?"

She pours more wine in her glass. She's going to need a lot more to tell this story. "I wish I knew. I mean, I sort of know, but I don't want to tell you. You'll just tell Howard and I don't know if I want everyone talking about this."

"Penny, I won't tell him. I promise."

"You have to swear on your life."

He gives her a withering look. "I swear on my life. And in return I'll tell you a secret that Howard doesn't know."

"You're keeping a secret from _Howard_?"

"I know, right?" Raj laughs.

She gets up and shuts the kitchen door. If they're going to tell secrets, they might as well have some privacy.

"You have to tell your secret first," she says.

"I'm starting cognitive behavioral therapy next week. For my…woman problem."

"Oh my God, that's the best idea _ever_. Good for you!"

"Yeah, well, don't get too excited. I don't know if it'll work."

"But why is it a secret? And from Howard?"

Raj shakes his head. "I don't know. I just get the feeling it would be something he'd give me shit about. That he might think it was funny. And I'm really serious about this. I'm sick of not being able to talk to half the human race. I'm sick of feeling like a freak."

She pats his hand. "I'm so glad, Raj. I hope it works."

"Me, too." He sips at his glass of wine, grimacing at the taste. It's really cheap wine. "So, anyways, you were going to tell me about Sheldon?"

She tells him the story of the night of Leonard's funeral and kissing him and how she ran away like a total chickenshit. And she tells him how she'd never really seen Sheldon in that kind of light before that but now she somehow can't get him out of her damn head and it's all confusing, especially because Sheldon's gone and it's not like they can talk about it. And how she's afraid that she hurt him and scared him off and now he'll never be back. She tells him about the Tibetan prayer flag and the bag of plaster.

By the time she's done with the story, she's breathless.

Raj sits in silence for a moment and Penny's afraid he's going to either start laughing at her or tell her she's lost her damn mind and should be institutionalized.

"I've done a lot of thinking about Sheldon lately," he finally says. "And I've come up with a couple of theories about him. Want to hear them?"

"That sounds awfully scientific, Raj."

"What you just told me fits into what I've been thinking."

"You _are_ totally deep. Who knew?"

He waves his hand as if he's annoyed, even though she knows he's not. "I was wondering why he ran off, although it's definitely not unprecedented for Sheldon to do that. But he's been gone for a long time."

Too long, she thinks.

"Sheldon's not like the rest of us. Which I know is not news to you, Penny."

She raises her eyebrows.

"But think about it. He's _never_ had what we'd think of as a normal life. I mean, he started college when he was eleven, for God's sake. Sure, I went to university when I was sixteen, but at least I was a teenager by that point. Sheldon was just a kid and he missed out on his whole adolescence. He earned his first doctorate by the time most guys his age were learning to drive."

No wonder Sheldon never learned to drive, she thinks. And something inside her feels somehow terribly sorry for him.

Raj continues, "I think at some point, Sheldon just thought, consciously or unconsciously, fuck it, I'm not normal, I'm never going to be like everyone else, so my whole world is going to be physics and winning the Nobel Prize and that's enough for me. Almost like he took some kind of vow of renunciation, like priest or something."

"That's exactly it," Penny says, nodding her head. "Like a priest. Which makes kissing him kind of creepy."

"He's not _really_ a priest," Raj says, rolling his eyes. "But yeah, anyhow, despite his weirdness, Sheldon grew up to have a pretty great life. He did cool research, he was developing a reputation in his field. He had a roommate who not only tolerated all the strange Sheldon stuff, but became his best friend. And he had other good friends who put up with it all because they knew that he was a great guy underneath all that. His life was totally structured. It was just the way he wanted it. And then Leonard died."

"And then Leonard died," she says with a tiny sigh.

"And it upset everything. I think it made him question everything in his life. His work—his unswerving path of physics and physics only."

"I suppose hooking up with me didn't help."

"Probably not," Raj says. "It probably made him have to deal with the fact that he's still a man, you know? That he _can't_ renounce everything but science. That he's human. All this stuff probably scares the crap out of him."

"I wish I could take that night back," she says.

"I think it was probably a good thing, in the end, if that makes any sense. He was going to have to deal with that side of himself some time. I think he's kept a _lot_ under wraps for a long time. It was bound to come out, eventually. I think he's out there, trying to figure who the hell he is, what he really wants from life."

When did Raj get so smart? And not just physics smart, but people smart.

She leans across the table and pecks Raj on the cheek. He looks at her with a deer in the headlights look and makes a strangled-sounding noise.

"Don't _even_," she says to him. "I swear to God, if you stop talking to me again, just when I'm finding out how awesome you are, I'm going to kick your ass so hard…"

"Like you could," he says, sounding normal again.

Penny crosses her arms at the chest. "Don't even try me."

*

Before the play has even closed, she's made up her mind. Despite the absolutely crap weather, she's going to move to Minneapolis.

All kinds of theater people want to work with her. An agent named Seth takes her out to lunch and talks about all the work he can get her. Quite a few movies are filmed in Minnesota because it's so cheap and there are a surprising number of national commercials shot there because of a couple of big and influential advertising agencies are located in Minneapolis. Did she know that the Twin Cities has the highest per capita ratio of theater companies in the country?

The lease on her apartment in Pasadena is coming up for renewal and Leonard's dead and Sheldon has disappeared into the ether and why _not_?

She signs on the dotted line before her seared tuna salad is even served.

She couldn't quite swim in the big pond, but maybe she can make it as a medium-sized fish in a medium pond.

When she calls Jane, Jane laughs and says, "I knew it! Michael owes me ten bucks now."

*

She flies to Los Angeles and Howard picks her up at the airport. He completely fails to hit on her on the way into Pasadena, or even make a double entendre, and she wonders what's up with that.

"I have a new girlfriend," he tells her, pulling up to her building. He looks shy and thrilled at the same time. "I don't know. This might be it."

She hugs him and tells him she hopes it is.

She gives away most of her stuff to the Goodwill on Altadena Drive. Raj takes her sofa and her friend Allie snags the bed. It's time to start fresh. She packs a couple of boxes and ships them to Jane's house.

On her last night, Raj and Howard take her out to Sushi Roku. She drinks too much sake and ends up sobbing over the dynamite and caterpillar rolls. "I'm going to miss you guys so much!"

"I hate change," Raj says glumly. "First Howard gets a serious girlfriend and then you go and move to Minnesota. This sucks."

She pats him on his hand. Earlier, he told her that his therapy was going pretty well and tonight he managed to order his own drink from the pretty waitress with only a minimum of stammering.

"It's only two thousand miles," Howard says, passing her a clean napkin to wipe her face.

This fact only makes her cry harder.

*

She finds an affordable one-bedroom apartment across the river in St. Paul. The neighborhood, Merriam Park, isn't as cool as Uptown, but it's a ton cheaper and she likes the quiet streets lined with trees and how kids ride their bikes up and down the sidewalks in their Catholic school uniforms.

She quits the Cheesecake Factory because driving all the way out to Edina is a pain in the butt and gets a job at the Longfellow Grill, just five minutes from her new apartment. The uniforms are way less demeaning, which is always a plus.

At first she has practically no furniture, just a futon Jane and Michael gave her and some orange crates for her clothes and other belongings. But she likes the emptiness of her new place. The bare white walls and shiny wood floors spell all sorts of possibilities to her. And there's a window seat in this place. When spring finally comes and the maple tree in front of her building grows leaves, it's like sitting in a treehouse.

Seth, her agent, is true to his word. She lands a really cheesy commercial for a local Hyundai dealer and a promo spot for KARE-11 news. In May she appears in a play for a one-act festival and gets a bunch of nice notices in the local papers. Jane is working on a new play and swears there's a juicy role for her in it. She even reads for a small role in the new Coen Brothers film, but she knows it's a long shot at the very best. She signs up for a beginning fiction class at The Loft, a writing education center in Minneapolis, figuring that if she wants to actually write a screenplay, she should learn to _write_ first. She thinks about taking an improv class, too. Everyone says she has a flair for comedy.

Things are happening so fast that sometimes she has to lie to down to absorb the fact that it's all real.

*

Memorial Day in Jane and Michael's backyard. Darwin is splashing with an inflatable dinosaur in his kiddie pool.

"What's his name?" Penny asks him.

"Attila," says Darwin.

"Why Attila?"

"Because he's a HUN!" Darwin shouts.

Penny walks back over to the lawn chairs on the patio. "Where did he get this Hun business from?" she asks Jane.

"Who knows? Kids are weird, mine most of all." Jane cracks open a beer and hands it to Penny. "Did I tell you that he told us the other day he wants to be a Cylon when he grows up?"

"You let him watch _Battlestar Galactica_? He's not even four yet."

"_I_ don't let him watch it. Michael lets him. But he swears he fast-forwards through the really scary and gross stuff."

Michael is over by the grill, methodically threading hunks of steak and chicken on skewers.

"When are we going to eat?" Jane shouts at him.

"The meat needs to be symmetrically placed on the skewers for even cooking, Jane."

"Men," Jane mock-huffs. "What are you going to do with them?"

Penny rolls her eyes. "Not much."

"Speaking of which, remember that guy you met the other night when you were at Bryant Lake Bowl with us? Dave? The lawyer?"

Penny doesn't really remember him but she decides it's easier to pretend that she does. "Sure. What about him?"

"He asked Michael for your phone number. Can I give it to him? I don't really know him but Michael says he's a really nice guy."

"Nah," she says, and sips her beer. "Not really into it."

"What's your deal, anyhow?" Jane asks. "I've seen plenty of guys hit on you…hell, I've even seen a couple of women hit on you, and you've blown them all off."

"I don't know," she says. "I just don't want to do the whole dating thing right now."

Jane touches Penny on the shoulder. "You seem sad sometimes. Is it Leonard?" Penny has told Jane all about Leonard's death, although she didn't drag in the whole story about Sheldon.

"I'll always be sad about Leonard. But it's not like I'm still in love with him or anything. I never was, really."

"Some other heartbreak?"

"Jane, I'd love to tell you about it but it's so weird and confusing and confusing that I can't even put anything into words," Penny says.

"That's all right."

"And besides," Penny goes on, "I really don't need a guy in my life right now. I mean, I pretty much always had a boyfriend from the time I was thirteen. I realized the other day I've always defined myself by the guys in my life. That being someone's girlfriend was the most important thing to me. And that's kind of bullshit, you know? I don't need a man to make me happy. I want to concentrate on acting, writing, all that good stuff."

"You're finally learning," Jane says.

"Yeah," Penny says, feeling strong and resolute. They clink beer bottles.

"Hey, did I tell you that Darwin's getting glasses next week? Poor boy. We're going to have to enroll him in tae kwon do or something so he doesn't get beat up during recess."

Penny laughs. "There's nothing wrong with being a geek," she says. "All of my best friends are geeks."

*

By August, the air has developed the texture of hot soup and the grass is starting to yellow.

She wakes up one morning in the new bed she bought with some of the proceeds from doing a Target national commercial, where she's flying through the air against a backdrop of red circles, brandishing a Swiffer Duster.

At first it feels like any other morning. She stretches and thinks about how it's the first day in ages she has the whole day to herself. No waitressing, no rehearsals, no auditions. Just a long, lazy Sunday.

She walks into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, remembering all the times she walked across the hall to snag milk from Leonard and Sheldon.

Leonard.

Penny looks at the calendar tacked up on the wall and it all comes back to her in rush so strong she has to sit down for a minute.

Sheldon in the ER, his clothes covered with his best friend's blood.

His voice cracking as he said, "I'm so sorry, Penny."

All of them sitting in the living room, not sure what to do next until Sheldon came in and told them they needed to play Halo, that Leonard would have wanted them to play on Halo Night anyhow.

Today's the day. It was a year ago.

And suddenly her empty day seems terrible and wrong. She can't stand the idea of sitting still with her thoughts.

She changes into workout clothes and hops in her car, drives all the way to Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. When in doubt, work it out, she tells herself, stretching by the running path. It's almost too humid to breathe, but she doesn't care. It feels good to push herself, to not have to think as she runs the three-mile path as fast as she can.

After she's made a full circle around the lake, she stops to catch her breath and watch a bunch of ducks swimming around.

When she was young, she believed in happy endings. She adored fairy tales more than anything else. She wanted to be Cinderella, Snow White _and_ Sleeping Beauty when she grew up. And she always believed there would be a happy ever after.

Now, she knows better. Not that she's grown utterly cynical and bitter. She's still something of an optimist, she thinks. But since Leonard was killed, she's come to realize that nothing will ever be perfect. Nothing lasts forever.

It's time to let Leonard go, she decides. Not that she'll ever forget him. How could she? But she has to stop feeling guilty about not loving him like she should have. She has to put her mourning aside and go on with her life. Leonard would want her to do that.

And what about Sheldon? She doesn't know. She doesn't know.

There won't be a fairytale ending. It's just too messy and complicated. Besides, he'll probably never be back. He's off in the jungles of Laos, she imagines, cultivating a crop of bug-resistant opium poppies or he's finally creating his secret lair, maybe somewhere in Greenland.

She'll have to be all right with that, in the end. But she can't help but hope that even if there will be no fairytale ending, that at least there might be some redemption in the end.

*

When she gets home, she has an envelope in her mailbox, stuffed in with the J. Crew catalogue and a million pieces of junk mail. She opens it up without looking at the return address. Inside is a small bag filled with what looks like dried herbs. She picks it up and sniffs it. The scent reminds her of the leg of lamb her half-Italian aunt by marriage used to make on Easter.

A tiny piece of paper flutters out of the envelope.

_Rosemary for remembrance._

The postmark is from Trieste, Italy.

*

It's funny but Raj has become her best friend. They email and text all the time, especially now that Penny has a BlackBerry, which she got for free when she did a Best Buy commercial.

He writes:

_I asked a girl out yesterday, can you even believe it?_

She answers:

_Of course I can. Raj your totally a STUD._

Howard's girlfriend breaks up with him because he won't move out of his mother's house. Penny sends him a bouquet of balloons.

*

In early fall she gets the news, a voice mail left on her phone while she's working the lunch shift. She listens to it in the break room.

She's been cast in the Guthrie Theater's annual production of _A Christmas Carol_, playing Marigold Fezziwig and Sophia. They're both small parts, but who cares? It's the _Guthrie_. She does a little dance around the room and a bunch of other waitstaff come in and everyone hugs her.

A day later she finds out the best part, the truly ass-kicking, awesome part that actually makes her scream out loud. Holy, holy shit.

She immediately punches Raj's number into her phone, praying he's home because if she doesn't get to tell him right this minute, she'll seriously explode and die.

He answers on the third ring. She can hear what sounds like gunfire in the background.

"Where are you?" she asks, breathlessly.

"I'm at home. Playing old school _Castle Wolfenstein_ with Howard."

"Oh my God, I have to tell you guys something. Can you put the phone on speaker?"

"Yeah, hang on," Raj says. "Okay, you're on speaker."

"Get this. I'm going to be in the Guthrie Theater's _Christmas Carol_!"

The guys cheer.

"No, no, that's not even the good part. Are you two sitting down? Because, oh my God, guess who's making his triumphant Guthrie return and playing Scrooge?"

"Just tell us!" Raj shouts.

"Only a certain gentleman named...PATRICK STEWART."

There's silence and for a second, Penny is sure that Raj and Howard have actually dropped dead.

*

pennyblossom: i am NOT flying to cali for the new star trek movie  
rabbitking12: but we'll make you a uhura costume. or galia. take yer pick.  
pennyblossom: its tempting but i dont have the time. rehearsals. plus itll get howards hopes up.  
rabbitking12: LAME  
pennyblossom: and your coming out here soon for PATRICK STEWART!!!!!!  
rabbitking12: i start crying every time i think about it.  
pennyblossom: baby!  
rabbitking12: so got a new boyfriend yet?  
pennyblossom: no  
pennyblossom: im taking a man break  
pennyblossom: maybe forever  
rabbitking12: still pining for sheldon?  
pennyblossom: NO  
pennyblossom: i don't pine. pining is for trees  
rabbitking12: yes u do.  
pennyblossom: do not. shut up raj  
rabbitking12: do too  
pennyblossom: NOT  
pennyblossom: ok, maybe a little bit  
rabbitking12: i knew it!!!!!  
rabbitking12: what would u do if he came back?  
pennyblossom: WHAT  
pennyblossom: do you know something?  
rabbitking12: no no no.  
rabbitking12: i know nothing. just asking. what would u do?  
pennyblossom: IDK  
pennyblossom: smack him upside the head  
pennyblossom: hug him kiss him  
pennyblossom: maybe cry. yep, id cry  
rabbitking12: see! u totally pine!!!  
pennyblossom: shut up raj i only pine for chris pine  
pennyblossom: and for spock. new spock, not teh old one. hes much sexier than the old one. zachary quinto, rrrowwwwwr!  
rabbitking12: don't let sheldon catch you saying that  
rabbitking12: you old piner.  
pennyblossom: SHUT UP FOREVER RAJ!!!!!!!!

*

She tries not to let Christmas get her down, the way it did last year when she was all alone in a cold new city. This is a whole new year. So what if she can't go home for Christmas this year? Hello, she's in a play at the Guthrie. With _Patrick Stewart_. Who is the nicest guy, with the most beautiful voice and accent. She could sit at his feet and listen to him all day. He doesn't even mind when she fangirls him at coffee break on the first day of rehearsals, asking him all kinds of questions that Howard and Raj have put her up to asking.

On a Sunday, she drives to the tree lot at the Farmer's Market in downtown St. Paul and picks out a five-foot tree. She somehow manages to wrestle it up to the third floor and get it set in the tree stand. She's Wonder Woman—she can do anything.

She buys presents for her family and the boys and even manages to mail them well ahead of time. At Creative Kidstuff she goes absolutely nuts on dinosaur stuff for Darwin.

She even gets a gift for Sheldon, even though she's sure she won't be able to give it to him.

Penny isn't sure if she trusts her memories of Sheldon anymore. More than a year later, she tends to only remember all the good times. She glosses over the fact that he often was rude and insulting to her. He really seemed to believe she was stupid and uninteresting. His rigidity drove her nuts. Who turns down perfectly good French toast just because it's Oatmeal Monday? That's a level of OCD that she's pretty sure she wouldn't be able to deal with on a daily basis. She'd probably bludgeon him to death with a frying pan within seventy-two hours.

Still, how come she can't stop thinking about him? Why does she lay alone in bed at night and imagine him touching her and the sound of his beating heart?

She wonders if she should start looking into exorcisms.

*

Opening night of _A Christmas Carol_ and she's strangely not afraid. The director is wonderful, the cast is fantastic, Patrick (she calls him by his first name now!) is a dear. It'll be just fine, she's sure.

She walks into the dressing room and there's a package propped up against the mirror.

Oh, Sheldon, she thinks. Stop sending me stuff and just come home.

The postmark is from Texas. Her heart is pounding as she tears open the paper.

She finds a cloth napkin. It looks like it's from the Cheesecake Factory. Her eyes begin to sting with tears.

The note reads: _Please collect an adequate DNA sample on my behalf._

"Just come home," she whispers, carefully folding the napkin.

*

Nicollet Mall is strangely deserted for just after midnight on a Friday night. The first real snow of the winter is falling in thick clumps from the sky.

Penny shivers as she walks the two blocks from The Local to the parking ramp. She shoves her hands into her coat pockets for warmth, wondering why she moved from Pasadena to Minneapolis, of all places. She forgot her gloves in the car. She's always forgetting her gloves. Her boots make a squeaky noise as she crunches through the newly fallen snow.

She's just crossed the street when she feels a hand grab the arm of her coat. A drunk from one of the bars or maybe a panhandler. She pulls away her arm and walks faster, glancing around to see if there's anyone else walking down Nicollet Mall. She digs in her left coat pocket for her cell phone, just in case.

"Penny," she hears a voice call out from behind her. "Penny, stop…"

She freezes in her tracks. She knows that voice as well as her own.

No. It can't be. It's not possible.

Penny doesn't believe in ghosts. Never has.

Not until tonight.

She whirls around.

Sheldon. My God.

She's paralyzed, unable to say anything or do anything, even to _think_. He must be a mirage, a figment of her longing over the last fifteen months. Because can Sheldon even be real anymore?

"Penny," he repeats. He's wearing a navy blue parka that looks about three sizes too big for him and his cheeks and the tip of his nose are red from the frigid air.

"Sheldon?" she says, blinking at him.

"It's me, Penny." He smiles a crooked smile that tells her that it really _is_ Sheldon, standing right here on Nicollet Mall.

She flings herself into his arms, pressing her cold face against his. He doesn't shrink from the contact, but wraps his arms around her, pulling her close.

"I'm so sorry," she hears herself say. "I'm so, so sorry, Sheldon."

"You needn't apologize for anything. Ever," he says and he kisses the top of her head. She can feel snowflakes melting on her cheeks.

There won't be a fairytale ending, she thinks as she kisses him, even though for this one moment it almost feels like one. But maybe, just maybe there will be redemption, after all.

END


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